The Up Side of Leaving Movies Early

I went to see The Up Side of Anger mainly for 2 reasons; i.e. I heard Kevin Costner gave a decent performance, and being the crabby old man I've become, hoping there might be some wisdom I could take home that would make me feel less crabby about being crabby... It turns out that this was actually a remake of Terms of Endearment, with Kevin Costner playing the Jack Nicholson character (this time an ex-baseball player instead of an ex-astronaut), Joan Allen the Shirley MacLaine character, and 4 lovely young girls all taking on parts of the Debra Winger character. The dialogue at least was fairly humorous, and there was at least one scene that I thought was about as funny as anything I'd seen in a while (though upon reflection I realized that this was also stolen from another movie; i.e. Scanners). (I think I popped a blood vessel behind my eyeball, I laughed so hard, as I immediately started having a severe pain back there...)

In any event, the movie started out with Kevin, Joan, and one of the girls attending a funeral, and then immediately switched to 3 years earlier. I sat there for about an hour and a half enjoying the humor in the crabbiness of Ms. Allen, and wishing that I could enjoy alcohol the way they enjoyed it (sans hangover)... but... about an hour in I started remembering the way the movie started, and then started wondering which one of 'em was going to die (a la Ms. Winger) and/or how. There were various possibilities... One was pregnant (also a la Ms. Winger), one got sick enough so that they thought she might have cancer (though apparently it was not...) and one could possibly have died from bungie jumping... I'm sure there were other possibilities, but as this question began to prey upon my psyche, well, I jumped ship... I'd gotten my laugh, had gotten no wisdom (though I never do anyway), and well I didn't want to know; I didn't want to be sitting there bawling like a baby because some fictional character met their demise too early in life. I couldn't help but feel as I left the building, why did they need to kill someone? Of course, maybe none of the girls died. Perhaps it was the hated ex-husband, perhaps it was the hated... Ah well, perhaps someone will see this movie and let me know. Otherwise, Alice was happy to see me return a few minutes early. I only yelled at a couple of drivers on the ride home...